October 23, 1983. I was not even in high school yet. I knew very little about the world around me. Then I heard the news. A suicide bomber detonated his explosives-laden truck at a Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, Lebanon. Soon we would learn that 241 Marines would be killed. The fear hit close to home because my cousin was serving in the USMC at the time, and was in the Middle East. Fortunately, we later found out that he was not in Beirut at the time (I believe he was in Haifa, Is...